Happy New Year!

There it is—the new year, of which I wish you all a happy one. In between the years (as the Germans like to say) I escaped the wet English winter and exchanged it with some German winter feeling, though largely without the usual snow but with lots of ice and coldness.



New Year´s Eve brought me to Berlin where more than a million people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate to welcome the new year. It was freezing cold but wrapped in lots of layers of clothing and not drinking anything cold it was an amazing experience to watch the fantastic fireworks display. I just wondered how people managed to get into the Reichstag—the German parliament building—with fireworks and shoot them off the roof. Yes, it actually looked like the Reichstag was burning again! Crazy Germans. I was never a big fan of Berlin and always considered it as a dusty and dirty place but I have to say that these five days at the End of 2008 kind of changed my opinion about the German capital. Despite temperatures around minus five degrees I found it quite enjoyable to (re)discover this city. I stayed in a hostel just off Friedrichstraße in East Berlin with everything in walking distance. Through a free walking tour on the first day I gained a completely new insight into what Berlin has on offer and understood many things about German history that used to bore me mindless at school. I do highly recommend these tips-based walking tours that work on the philosophy of giving everyone the opportunity to enjoy the city regardless of budget. The best tour ever!



For the rest of the week I tried to keep warm at various christmas markets with a number of punches, hot alcoholic drinks and curry sausages. The Bauhaus Archiv was interesting but surprisingly minimalist. It takes roughly an hour to have a thorough look at all the exhibits, using the audio guide provided free of charge. There was too much ceramics, paintings and product design for my liking and I would have enjoyed more print and graphics based work. Nonetheless it got me interested to read further into the subject. One thing however struck me—the Bauhaus seemed a pretty reasonable model for art education, but looking at art schools these days: where has it failed? I suppose elaborating on that would fill an essay or two.



Other interesting things to see in Berlin are the Museum of Communication, which is actually more interesting than it sounds—despite the emphasis on postage stamps and the hands-on 'exploratory' concept (cf. Explore@Bristol) that attracts too many children.



The DDR museum unfortunately didn't live up to my expectations. It´s certainly interesting and a nice hang-out place for people that like to reminisce about those days but for foreign people and those who really want to learn about life in the former East Germany it doesn't offer a great deal of information. And again, the whole hands-on thing might be nice for kids, but is rather annoying for people that actually want to see an exhibition. As far as I'm concerned I found it too crowded and badly laid out. There are tons of museums around the former inner-German border that offer more information at a lower price.



Even though I'm not at all into Graffiti and street art, I very much enjoyed the exhibitions at Tacheles. The art centre was located just on our doorstep and really is worth a look. The building has an interesting history and the large back-yard holds several sculptures erected using rubble, debris, vehicles, scrap metal and other objects. On the third and fourth floor there are some studios with paintings and collages but even the building itself is a huge canvas for graffiti and paste-ups of all sorts. Particularly funny is the very useful piece of information design behind the front door, a sheet of paper that reads "Do not piss or shit over here". Love it.



And one more thing that stood out to me in Berlin is this piece of typography which I found on a shopping window. I don't really remember where exactly it was but it struck me that something that looks kind of sophisticated (as far as the choice of typeface is concerned) does so bad in other aspects of typography. I mean confusing straight and curly quotation marks is one thing, but using them both in the same context is even for someone without an eye for typography blatently wrong. And as if that´s not enough, for the apostrophy they avoided the decision whether to use straight or curly marks by simply replacing them with a period. Oh and Essen is a town, the verb is usually not capitalised. It just made me giggle.


 
Berlin impressions: